Finding the right user to test your software

Over the years of development on my product, I have been working with different batches of tester. And I have noticed some good time, as well as some bad time with some of them. I noticed a "trend" that lead to my different emotions.

I feel fruitful and respected when I work with tester who is knowledgeable. The "knowledge" I am referring to, is the understanding of the domain that the software is dealing with. One analogy I can thought of, is the necessity to recruit driver in testing out a car. You won't find someone who don't know how to drive a car for testing.

OK, I hear your voice. You say the test is biased if the user is already "contaminated".

I would agree if the test is focused on the perception on something intangible. E.g. the color should be used or where the submit button should be placed. But if the test require the knowing of the mechanism, it falls into another dimension.

What's more, if your test is composed by a league of such user, I could not imagine how diversify the feedback will be. Each of them will likely to represent the personal preference of the user and what matter worst is, these user will likely NOT to be the same group of user who gonna pay and use your product.

Developing software is an art, but spotting the right gang of people to give you feedback is even so. Now I will go back to my cave and meditate on the next features to implement.

Software I have purchased in 2007

Some people like to buy clothes and I definitely have a desire to buy good software. Be it commercial software, or shareware, I would get myself a license as long as I find it useful.

1. Springy
   
2. BetterZip
   
3. PulpMotion
   
4. HTTP Scoop
   
5. Connected Flow - Aperture Plugin
   
6. Connected Flow - iPhoto Plugin
   
7. Sticky Window
   
8. PDF Studio
   
9. Coda
   
10. Parallels
    
11. Oxygen XML Editor (include the license for SVNClient)
    
12. VMWare Fusion
    
13. Screen Recycler
    
14. iLife 2008
    
15. iWorks 2008
    
16. Keynote Pro - Eclipse Pro
    
17. Graphic Converter 6.0 upgrade
    
18. Fission
    
19. Write Room
    
20. VMWare Workstation 6.0 for Linux
    
21. 1Password
    
22. IntelliJ 7.0
    
23. Mac OS X 10.5
    
24. MarsEdit 2.0 upgrade
    
25. TheMacPak
    

The heavily used application

With OS excluded, I still have a couple of candidate.
VMWare Fusion, iWorks, Connected Flow Aperture Plugin, 1Password. This one is tough so there will be two winners - VMWare Fusion and 1Password. You can find both application running on my mbp everyday, my development work rely very much on VMWare and 1Password could help me to manage the password for the different kind of account I am having.

The worst investment

There's several of them, TheMacPak, Screen Recycler, Parallels and Oxygen XML Editor. But if I have to pick one, it will go to Parallels. I bought it even before it ships, it works OK but definitely resources hog. Besides, I am so used to VMWare that I jumped right into it when they have the mac version ready. Sometimes, I should just wait and decide.

The bang of the bucks

Springy. It's very useful, especially with the context menu integration. The good thing is, it even works with JAR files, that helps me to navigate through the java library which I need to tackle in development work.

The interesting candidate

Apart from the application above, I would also like to mention a service which I used a lot over the year. I purchase the stock photo and vector graphics which I used in presentation from iStockphoto. They used to be quite cheap ($10 for 10 credit) but have increased the price recently. Still, they offer a wide range of quality photos that could liven up the boring presentation.

Expression Engine Re-visit

Sometimes ago, I talked about my view towards Expression Engine.

Time rolling forward until May, 2007. I am now determining on how to setup the community site for CECID, which we expect it will be

partly a blog, partly a forum with user activity, some static pages for file downloading purposes.

The challenge is, are the a single platform that serve it all?

Can my old mate help me out?

My first reaction is to consider about Wordpress, the tools I am most familiar with. It is easy to setup, quite extensible (due to the availability of plugin and templates) but it only shines in a single perspective - Blogging. It will be difficult to integrate other features, especially on how to share a single user account across the different function.

So, a no go. Next, Drupal and Joomla comes up in mind.

Time to think alternative

I have tried Drupal quite extensively before, when I was setting up this blog. I remember how tedious it is in both configuration and content publishing. I can't even spot out the route on how to do every thing. The admin panel is messy in short.

Joomla, it has the functions required and provide rooms for the administrator to configure the look and feel. Customization can be done, yet, it's not intuitive. I don't have much interest to try out again, but might consider to take a second look at it.

Can we have a second chance?

And EE pops up in mind again. Headed over to their new homepage (http://ellislab.com/) and noticed about the new look. Gone through the 4 video tutorial in illustrating the main concept of EE (especially the templating system) and I can grasp their templating idea. Like why it is done this way and the strength of the architecture.

They provided the forum module with a single user database, too. So, it matches functionality. What I have done next is to apply for a trial account, allowing me to try out their templating system, forum module and such. Their templating system is very powerful, the content aggregation and look of the website can be designed with ease, it is a very nice MVC implementation. Imagine, you can customize the layout of the homepage in HTML, but you have provided additional tag that allows logical operation in building up the page.

A powerful templating system

For instance, I can define the homepage to show the latest forum post summary on the right hand side, and only show the summary of each blog entry in reverse chronological order. I can even pass in arguments which the tag can understand, e.g. the number of entry to show, etc.

The content of the website can be defined into groups, e.g. product group, download group, etc. For each group, we can define the look and feel individually. I have spoted a nice layout from the Open Source Web Design web page, and have it applied to the "Product" section.

Administration and installation is also a breeze, you post the article, configure the server all in one place. The layout makes much more sense and you can decide to turn on or off certain features as you see fit.

There's always a but ...

With all these features, I am sold, but there's a downside. It is not a free software.

They offered 2 types of license, basically one for commercial and one is not. I checked with them and they said we can use the non-commercial license. This license, together with the forum module, cost the centre for about HK$1200. I would say it is reasonably charged.

Now, what's left are the building of the Information Architecture, and also the templates that will be used in the forum module.

For anyone of interest, head over to Expression Engine and get a copy of Core Edition, which is for non-profit and personal use. It has provided the templating engine already.